My Brother, My Sisters is a one-act ballet made by Kenneth MacMillan for Stuttgart Ballet, where it was given under the title Mein Bruder, meine Schwestern, with a scenario loosely drawn from the lives of the Brontë family. The score combines pieces by Schoenberg and Webern, and the designs were by Yolanda Sonnabend, who had worked with MacMillan since his 1963 Symphony.
What is danced
The article gives no synopsis, scene breakdown, or description of steps, holds, or technique, so nothing specific about the choreography's vocabulary can be stated on its authority. What can be said from the credits is structural: it is a single-act work built on three orchestral scores by two composers rather than a continuous ballet score, which typically shapes such a piece into a sequence of shorter, contrasting movements or episodes rather than one sustained narrative arc. Beyond that, a reader looking for pas de deux, ensemble work, or named numbers will not find them documented here.
Context
MacMillan made this piece for Stuttgart Ballet in the mid-to-late 1970s, a period when he was working across both that company and the Royal Ballet, and setting narrative or psychologically charged one-act works to non-balletic concert scores was characteristic of his output in this decade. This is drawn from general knowledge of MacMillan's career rather than from the article, which does not discuss the broader dance context.
Staging history
The premiere took place on 21 May 1978 in Stuttgart under Kenneth MacMillan's direction for Stuttgart Ballet, with an original cast including Birgit Keil, Richard Cragun, Lucia Montagnon, Reid Anderson, Jean Allenby, Sylviane Bayard, and Hilde Koch. MacMillan remounted the work for the Royal Ballet in April 1980 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
How to watch it
Watch for how the ballet is structured around the three separate orchestral suites (Webern's Op. 10 and Op. 6, Schoenberg's Op. 16) rather than a single continuous score, which is likely to produce distinct sections or shifts in mood and grouping. Note the Brontë-family premise and watch for how the designer Yolanda Sonnabend's sets and costumes signal period and domestic setting, since the article gives no further detail on staging devices.
Credits
- composer: Anton Webern